Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:45:59 +0200
From: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
To: Tomas Kolda <koldat@gmail.com>
Cc: ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: Native Alpine GLibc support (NEW)
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On Tue, 21 Jun 2022 10:49:07 +0200
Tomas Kolda <koldat@gmail.com> wrote:


> > I would rather spend the resources on fixing the issues with musl.
> >  
> I completely agree and understand your view. Unfortunately I am not in
> a position to offer or fund the resources. 

This is what I was afraid of.

> Yes it can bring users and yes it can generate additional issues.

So more work, but not not more resources.

> My intention really was to have a pure Alpine built against glibc. It
> is a C library as a MUSL. Everything else is exactly same.

I actually don't believe this, even if that is how it would start.

Adding glibc support will open new possibilities, like adding support
for systemd (see
https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/merge_requests/33329).

I believe this would trigger big discussions and possible conflicts.
After months of conflicts and 3-5 (or more) developers leaving the
project systemd will be merged. It would be kind of stupid to not do
so.

Now we will have to maintain both openrc and systemd services. systemd
will add its own set of new dependencies (together with many awesome
features of course). The initramfs scripts will need work to handle
this, the installer script will need to be adapted to this.

We would now effectively be supporting two different OSes in one
project and at some point we will realize that we simply don't have
resources for supporting both. The most realistic outcome would be that
we'd need to drop openrc/busybox and musl libc support. How many other
distros that have added systemd support has *not* ended up with it as
the only supported init?

At this point there would not really be any big difference from
CentOS/Redhat/Debian/Ubuntu/etc.

So why not just use CentOS/Redhat/Debian/Ubuntu in the first place? I
believe there is where we'd end up anyway eventually.

> I remember how much we were fighting with all variants of
> dependencies that are coming as glibc based, because many users are
> still on CentOS/Redhat/Debian/Ubuntu/etc. Glibc is mostly the
> blocker. That is also why I was not going to try to improve the MUSL
> as at the end I would hit the wall, because of another glibc based
> component.
> 
> Anyway if there is some interest just let me know.
>
> Thanks,
> Tomas